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Sunday, November 4, 2012

Weekly Updates: Fairly Random & Disappointing

58º ~ after a weird run of days in the 80s, settling back into our amazing & beautiful fall weather, a gentle line of t-storms brought down a cold front last night, bright, clear sun

So, after my post on Tuesday morning, things pretty much went downhill this week. It was a combination of misadventure and feeling low.

C. was home from school all week with the pink eye, contracted from one of his students no doubt. Teaching, the job that keeps on giving. While I avoided conjunctivitis, I just ended up feeling achy, grouchy, and exhausted, coming home from teaching and sleeping each afternoon for several hours and then sleeping each night as well. (Yes, I KNOW I am lucky beyond words to have a job with this kind of flexibility...it makes up for it when I'm grading non-stop.) Normally, if I even dare take a 20-minute nap, my whole night's sleep is off. My body may have been fighting something off, but I think my mind was also worn down by the mid-semester blues.

On Friday, I received that lovely NEA email so many of us received: "sorry, try again in 2 years." I was more able to keep the rejection in perspective this year, given all the misery left in Hurricane Sandy's wake, but it still hurts. FB was extremely helpful as I felt less alone in the disappointment.

Speaking of destruction in the northeast. I tried to get on the Poetry Society of American's website today and no luck. Their address is Gramercy Park, NYC, so I'm wondering if they sustained damage as well. Sending positive vibes to everyone in the path and especially those still without power.

Yesterday, I did summon the courage to send out The Girlhood Book of Prairie Myths to three more publishers. Today, I spent an hour sorting through poems from the fever book that are available for submission to journals. I ended up sending out only one packet, but I'm good with that. This whole process has been so different from the past. I've never had the whole collection of poems written while sending out individual poems. It brings a different light to the revisions I make, and I feel like the manuscript as a whole will be the stronger for it. I'm hoping to start sending that mss. out in January.

In good news, that extra hour of sleep last night was reviving, and I think having more light in the morning may help me bounce back from the blahs.

6 comments:

I have been under the weather too lately - and the bad news in the NE and the NEA rejection didn't help! I hope we all have good news to share soon. The NEA just doesn't appreciate us. We have to find someone who does!

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About Me

My most recent book, The Girlhood Book of Prairie Myths, won the 2013 Full Length Poetry Contest from Jacar Press. My first book, Blood Almanac, won the 2005 Anhinga Prize for Poetry. I received my MFA from the University of Arkansas Fayetteville and my BA in English from the College of St. Benedict.
I teach at Pulaski Technical College, where I direct the Big Rock Reading Series. I also co-edit Heron Tree, a journal of online poetry, bound annually.
Email me at sandy dot 40 dot longhorn at gmail dot com